Meet Matt Kruse, the man making Facebook better

Kruse doesn’t work for Facebook, but he’s changed how people see their feeds.

Around ten o’clock on most nights, Matt Kruse will kiss his wife and two daughters goodnight, sit down in front of his computer and start coding. It’ll be one or two in the morning before he goes to bed. He works as a Web application developer at a staffing company during the day, but those late-night hours in his Illinois home are where he works on what he calls “who I really am.”

Kruse spends those hours making Facebook better. He doesn’t get paid for it, and he’s not an employee of the company (although it has tried to hire him before). The product of those hours is called Social Fixer—a browser extension designed to improve and enhance the site. It has become one of the most popular solutions for anyone who doesn’t like Facebook’s interface. Kruse says he doesn’t have an exact figure, but he estimates that between 500,000 and 1 million people use it, along with an e-mail list that boasts 1.4 million subscribers.

Social Fixer uses Javacript to modify Facebook’s interface. It gives you dozens of options for customizing how you see Facebook: you can separate updates into tabs, enable mouse-over image previews, change the layout, filter posts from your friends, give everything a theme and even hide the bits you find disagreeable. It’s a huge amount of work to keep going, but although Kruse has a tiny Paypal donations button on the bottom of his website to cover his expenses, he says he hasn’t made any efforts to profit from it, despite being contacted several times by people who sniffed money to be made.

So far, he’s turned them all down. “There was one person a while ago who seemed pretty promising,” he says. His tone is gently bemused, as if not quite believing that people actually want to pay money for his work. “I’ve had ten offers over the past four years from people who say they want to add advertising inside it or attach some additional software to the installer… But the way they wanted to implement it technically would have put my users at risk of them being malicious, so I couldn’t do that.”

Social Fixer was born in 2009 when Kruse became frustrated at not being able to tell the difference between new posts and ones he’d read already. “It was like looking at your inbox and seeing the same thing every time you loaded it up,” he says.

A Javascript engineer by trade, he wrote a quick and dirty Greasemonkey script for Firefox that he felt would fix some of the petty annoyances of the site. It was tricky, but he managed it: “Facebook is one of the most complicated systems I know of,” he says. “They’re constantly having to display all of this content, for millions of people at once, and do it without a break in the system… I’ve been using Javascript for a long time, so that seemed the easiest way to make the options available.”

Kruse showed it to colleagues at his job. Buoyed by their enthusiasm for his script, he put it online under the name Better Facebook. It got an audience fast, and Kruse found his hands full dealing with updates, modifying the software to deal with Facebook’s changing interface.

It wasn’t Kruse’s only “side project”—he also spends his night hours working on a javascript toolbox and PHP library for programmers—but in many ways, it was one he began work on at just the right time. In 2008, a year before he first started coding it, he and his wife, Dawn, lost their son. Kevin Kruse was two years old when he died from a heart condition.

“It was a big part of my life, and it affected us very much, and affected my view of things,” the soft-spoken Kruse says. What happened to his son, he explains, affected how he deals with his often vocal users—especially those unhappy with some aspect of the program.

“I’m more understanding of people,” he says. “There are a lot of people who have things going on in their lives, and knowing the struggles I had personally to hold my family and job together, there are a lot of people who have their own struggles. When they’re on there saying, this doesn’t work, this really annoys me, I can think, maybe they’re having a rough day or are going through a rough time. Maybe Facebook is all they have to connect to people. I try to keep in mind that someone might be having the worst day of their life today.”

Shortly after Better Facebook started to get popular, the company’s lawyers came calling. But while these sorts of visits usually end in acrimony and drawn-out court cases, this one had a happy ending—more or less. All the lawyers wanted was for Kruse to drop the ‘Facebook’ from the name. He happily complied, renaming it Social Fixer—and soon afterwards, they invited him to interview for a role there.

The author's Facebook page, using Social Fixer.

He didn’t end up working for Facebook—it told him he wasn’t a good cultural fit—but he says he was surprised that Social Fixer’s features weren’t being taken up by the company itself. “When I talked to the head Javascript guy at Facebook during the interview, he asked me how I do things and what I hook into, and he seemed to be amazed that this was even possible,” he says. “He hadn’t even considered that you could do this. They have a weird mindset there… they seem very protective of their ideas, and someone from the outside would never have a good enough idea to implement.”

Protective they might be, but Facebook let Kruse carry on tinkering with Social Fixer. It’s not a courtesy it's extended to others, coming down hard on similar programs like Unfriend Finder and FB Purity, blocking them from accessing the site.

Steve Fernandez, a British programmer, created FB Purity in 2009; like Kruse, he’d become frustrated at not being able to see what he wanted on Facebook’s homepage. But unlike its kid-gloves treatment of Kruse, Facebook got serious. Fernandez says that although initially it just asked him to remove its trademark from his program name, it then “decided to block my domain name from being shared on the Facebook site, to try and limit the spread of the app.” It led to a protracted fight between Fernandez and Facebook, which, he says, has led to his account being disabled and confrontations with the site’s legal team.

“As I am sure you are aware,” one of their lawyers wrote in an e-mail to Fernandez, “Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities prohibits integrations that impair the proper working or appearance of Facebook, including those that interfere with page rendering… Your extension was reported as interfering with and/or impairing site functionality and page rendering and links to your site have been blocked.”

When asked why it gave Social Fixer a pass and not FB Purity, Facebook’s press officer Jillian Stepanki declined to comment.

Kruse has done his best to steer Social Fixer clear of certain areas of Facebook that he feels might be more trouble than they’re worth—he’s kept out of the company’s thorny privacy and data security issues, for one. “I don’t have anything to do with privacy or security,” he explains “People have asked me for features to restrict what people can see, or can I change my privacy settings to be ideal, and I don’t want to mess with any of that. I don’t want to be responsible for a screw-up where somebody makes a post thinking Social Fixer would hide it, and it turned out to be public. I don’t want to be liable for anything like that."

“There’s nothing I can do to prevent Facebook from snooping on any of the data—they own it, it’s on their site. The only thing I do is affect what people see in their browsers.”

It’s not just Facebook that has tried to lure Kruse away from Illinois. Google has offered him a job—not once, but twice. Kruse turned the company down both times—he didn’t want to move his family all the way to California and didn’t fancy living somewhere as expensive as Google’s Silicon Valley base. But more than that, he says, it would have forced him to give up Social Fixer—Facebook is a direct competitor to Google, so he would have, in effect, been working on a competitor’s product.

“I think of my side-work as who I really am,” he says. “I go to my job and do my work, but I’m a creative person, and I like to build things. To give that up and walk away from it would be like sacrificing who I really am to get something that I’m not really.”

Despite the fact that he is, in effect, changing the work of Facebook’s engineers, Kruse says that he really appreciates what they do: “They do a fantastic job of creating something incredibly complex, way beyond anything I could do, and I wouldn’t exist unless they did.”

78 Reader Comments

It's pure speculation, of course, but my guess would be FB leaves him alone because he isn't confrontational about things and shies clear of the controversial topics. Hell, they probably look at his code for places to improve, too. LOL

It's pure speculation, of course, but my guess would be FB leaves him alone because he isn't confrontational about things and shies clear of the controversial topics. Hell, they probably look at his code for places to improve, too. LOL

Edit: No other comments? Really? Weird ...

I've never used his stuff. I'm really not unhappy with facebook's interface at all, aside from that stupid two column layout on timelines.

Pure speculation, but I imagine FB's "your not a good cultural fit" was in part because he goes his own way with this stuff and probably isn't interested in working on anything else. Working with a team on a product and within a company is totally different from solo-hacking something awesome.

It surprises me however that Google, which used to be more pro solo-hacking, didn't offer him buckets of money to ditch FB and come to Google to have free rein to do whatever he wanted on G+. People with passion like this for whatever it is they're doing is priceless. The problem there may sill be that inside those corporation's one's code often never sees the light of day.

Side note: some ars author ought to do story on how much code google, Facebook, apple, Microsoft dump in the trash everyday...

It surprises me however that Google, which used to be more pro solo-hacking, didn't offer him buckets of money to ditch FB and come to Google to have free rein to do whatever he wanted on G+. People with passion like this for whatever it is they're doing is priceless. The problem there may sill be that inside those corporation's one's code often never sees the light of day.

His cool tool almost makes me wish I still used Facebook. Though it was the privacy and advertising issues that drove me away, the incredibly bland and boring interface was no pleasure to stare at. I understand that Facebook wants to avoid becoming the visual atrocity that was MySpace, but I've seen banking websites that are more aesthetically pleasing.

A bit shocked that the author would demonstrate the "improvement" made possible through Social Fixer by showing his profile page set entirely to Comic Sans. But I guess de gustibus non est disputandum and all that.

When Facebook first came out one of the big advantages it had over MySpace was that people couldn't customize their profiles to look terrible through the use of bad fonts, background colors, and music/gifs.

I think a tool like Social Fixer is a nice compromise so people like the author can enjoy themes without others having to endure them.

I don't agree that themes and fonts would make Facebook better, though.

It's pure speculation, of course, but my guess would be FB leaves him alone because he isn't confrontational about things and shies clear of the controversial topics. Hell, they probably look at his code for places to improve, too. LOL

The reason is basically implied when the article got into the apps that were blocked: because everything remains strictly client-side. Social Fixer doesn't fuck with privacy settings. I never tried FB Purity when it was around, but I bet you anything it did things like let you re-organize your friends into groups who can and can't see your messages, and that's why they got blocked. It's one thing to install a program that changes the way you see Facebook, it's a whole different ballgame if you install a program that changes the way other people see Facebook.

Side Note: even though Kruse does this for free, legally he still owns that code. And since FB have made it known that they're aware of Kruse's work, they would be liable if it was ever shown that they used his code without his permission. So no, FB wouldn't touch his code with a ten foot pole. Anyway, only a million people use his program. That's .1% of all Facebook users. They probably consider it a niche interest at best. Hell, they turned him down. It was Google he turned down.

I've been using Matt's Social Fixer and absolutely love the look of the "Dark" profile choice much better than the original. I only wish the folks at Facebook would stop constantly changing codes and throwing a monkey wrench into almost everything Matt makes work or look better! Don't they know that he is actually making people view Facebook for longer periods of time just because it's more pleasing to the eye and more functional as well? He's actually doing Mark Zuckerberg and all the Facebook stockholders a favor and they're too stupid to even realize it!

“There are a lot of people who have things going on in their lives, and knowing the struggles I had personally to hold my family and job together, there are a lot of people who have their own struggles. When they’re on there saying, this doesn’t work, this really annoys me, I can think, maybe they’re having a rough day or are going through a rough time. Maybe Facebook is all they have to connect to people. I try to keep in mind that someone might be having the worst day of their life today.”

This man literally just changed the way I've been thinking about software for the last 15 years.

I am for Matt Kruse for not to jump ship with Google. As a person who have worked for a few corporations in his past. A good coder doesn't mean a thing when you also have to deal with the other coders next to you. And especially to those who have their much higher seniority than you have. Politic is an awful dangerous dirty game to play. Everyone wants to secure his job the best way he can be and that is including to get rid of you a new guy on the block. You might found yourself looking your way out quicker than you got in. Working for big corporations is like taking a night walk in Amazon jungle, hidden traps are everywhere. Watch out for that pothole you are just about stepping in. On the other hand, it is a new challenge to your life, a big challenge, and that is only if you don't mind the challenge.

He can make Facebook better by getting rid of it entirely and forcing people to communicate in more personal ways!

/grumpyoldman

Except that it wouldn't force people to communicte in "more personal" ways - it would stop people from communicating in an easy way, which would NOT result in an increase in communication - quite the opposite in fact .

The author would like it noted that he is horrified that Comic Sans snuck into this story. He only took that photo to illustrate Social Fixer's themes option, and for some reason he neglected to check the font.

He has received an almighty bollocking from his designer girlfriend. Although unable to change the photo, he would like to sincerely apologise for the pain and anguish he has caused.

Thanks for the comments folks - as always with Ars, they're a lot of fun to read.

Around ten o’clock on most nights, Matt Kruse will kiss his wife and two daughters goodnight, sit down in front of his computer and start coding. It’ll be one or two in the morning before he goes to bed.

The author would like it noted that he is horrified that Comic Sans snuck into this story. He only took that photo to illustrate Social Fixer's themes option, and for some reason he neglected to check the font.

He has received an almighty bollocking from his designer girlfriend. Although unable to change the photo, he would like to sincerely apologise for the pain and anguish he has caused.

Thanks for the comments folks - as always with Ars, they're a lot of fun to read.

Well that's clearly not good enough for the amount of anguish caused. You will be hearing from our lawyers, good sir!

Btw, your girlfriend doesn't happen to be available to represent us, is she? Or maybe material witness will have to do

I will hopefully be starting a new university this September and have been told that they do use Facebook extensively to contact students. This gives me some hope that it won't be quite so bad having to go back on there after having deleted my account a couple of years ago.

It's pure speculation, of course, but my guess would be FB leaves him alone because he isn't confrontational about things and shies clear of the controversial topics. Hell, they probably look at his code for places to improve, too. LOL

Edit: No other comments? Really? Weird ...

I've never used his stuff. I'm really not unhappy with facebook's interface at all, aside from that stupid two column layout on timelines.

Social Fixer addressed the two-column timeline layout long ago, by including an option to make it single-column.... Quoting the article "....he says he was surprised that Social Fixer’s features weren't being taken up by the company itself".... ....funny how facebook's now gone to a single-column timeline [of you haven't got it yet, it won't be long]. .

Great story, wish this guy the best! Gives me a good feeling that the "guy in his garage with a soldering iron" can still be just as creative as the big guys

I reckon not only are you 100% right - but that's because the "guy in his garage with a soldering iron" can just get on with his own ideas on the spot....but the big guys have to attend mass meetings to come to agreement on what they intend, THEN co-ordinate the design team in understamding the general concept AND...., THEN........etc., ad infinitum!!

It's pure speculation, of course, but my guess would be FB leaves him alone because he isn't confrontational about things and shies clear of the controversial topics. Hell, they probably look at his code for places to improve, too. LOL

The reason is basically implied when the article got into the apps that were blocked: because everything remains strictly client-side. Social Fixer doesn't fuck with privacy settings. I never tried FB Purity when it was around, but I bet you anything it did things like let you re-organize your friends into groups who can and can't see your messages, and that's why they got blocked. It's one thing to install a program that changes the way you see Facebook, it's a whole different ballgame if you install a program that changes the way other people see Facebook.

Side Note: even though Kruse does this for free, legally he still owns that code. And since FB have made it known that they're aware of Kruse's work, they would be liable if it was ever shown that they used his code without his permission. So no, FB wouldn't touch his code with a ten foot pole. Anyway, only a million people use his program. That's .1% of all Facebook users. They probably consider it a niche interest at best. Hell, they turned him down. It was Google he turned down.

I fully understand your reasoning, so I want to make the point that I DO respect your CLEAR reasoning, and my reply should be thought of in the same way....just reason through experience [and a bit of direct knowledge of the specifics] and intend on [ :O OOPS!! - just caught a BAD typo!! - for 'on' read 'no'] ....NO insult or disrespect to either yourself or the developer of FB Purity.

I did try FB purity - I came across both extensions in a Facecrooks post about THE ONLY genuine and reliable colour changers, so tested both....and opted for Social Fixer as by far the more stable and sophisticated option.- never approaching Matt's skill level. I didn't keep up with it's developments - but I'd be astonished if he cracked the privacy settings, or particularly re-ordering 'friends' in to groups as you describe: facebook itself has long made provision for that, so it's completely unnecessary.

I can state as outright fact that when the developer got approached by facebook's legal team to remove what they considered the company's intellectual property from the name of his extension - the common abbreviation of 'facebook' to 'fb' [WHAT!!?? I back the guy FULLY in his fight....but he went about it the wrong way, sadly] - his response to outright refuse, declaring that in the case of his extension, 'FB' was an abbreviation of 'Fluff Busting'....like ANYONE was going to believe that. He wouldn't change the name....and THAT is why he got banned. A sad, rotten story - and especially by the way facebook acted!! - WHAT is WRONG with providing an extension which gives them free publicity....!!????

Around ten o’clock on most nights, Matt Kruse will kiss his wife and two daughters goodnight, sit down in front of his computer and start coding. It’ll be one or two in the morning before he goes to bed.

Hopefully he can and will leverage that effort to something more important in the future. Otherwise this sounds like someone who volunteers their time improving mail at AOL.

Outside supporting family and friends, What's more important than doing what you love? Matt volunteers an EXTRAORDINARY amount of time to giving people exactly what he stated with the original name: A Better facebook - all by himself devoting an enormous amount of time to providing TENS OF THOUSANDS of facebook users with a "better facebook experience". And to quote the article: "Kruse says he doesn't have an exact figure, but he estimates that between 500,000 and 1 million people use it, along with an e-mail list that boasts 1.4 million subscribers":. 'Boasts' - no; "1.4 million subscribers" isn't "an e-mail list" - it's those who subscribe to the Social Fixer News page [ https://www.facebook.com/lists/10150970104052276 ] Which is an option included in Social Fixer's settings. So if you've read the article through and come to understand the modest nature of the man [quoting the article again] "he estimates that between 500,000 and 1 million people use it" is going to be a modest estimate. Think about it - who's going to subscribe to news about an extension they don't use? He has a beta testing page too [ https://www.facebook.com/sfxdev ] - and that alone has over eight thousand followers.

With the voluntary contributions to the development fund having long left him paying for our pleasure from his own pocket; AND in attempts to keep up with facebook's continual 'fixing of what ain't broke', which frequently break Social Fixer functions.... I've known the guy to be on vacation, sat on the beach with his family - working on his laptop to keep ip with changes made by a big corporate team.

Personally, I'd consider his voluntary, private work to be of far greater significance and worth than anything AOL have ever achieved.

Matt Kruse does extraordinary work for our pleasure - and even with contributions has mainly been paying for it out of his own pocket. Voluntary contributions can be made at http://socialfixer.com/donate.php

Are Kruse's and the other blocked apps making calls via an API or are they just modifying the existing HTML in the user's browser? If it's the latter there's really nothing FB can do to stop them even if they wanted to.

"but those late-night hours in his Illinois home are where he works on what he calls “who I really am.”

Kruse spends those hours making Facebook better."

Pft... The only way to make FB better would to burn down the server rooms it's hosted in. He should identify himself with something that's actually beneficial to the society and spend his energy on it rather than fixing Facebook. Hell, even if it was just a fan site for cat lovers it'd be more beneficial that damned Facebook.

Are Kruse's and the other blocked apps making calls via an API or are they just modifying the existing HTML in the user's browser? If it's the latter there's really nothing FB can do to stop them even if they wanted to.

I'd expect they could seriously frustrate him by obfuscating their JavaScript and changing the names of CSS classes and DOM elements. Certainly they could make it periodically break or be flaky to the point where most users would give up on it.

Of course, this kind of obfuscation would frustrate Facebook's own developers as well.